“…having a two-year supply of anything on hand seems like bad business.”

More than 1,500 ELRs were in inventory at the time of publication, with Cadillac selling ranging between 41 and 97 units per month so far this year.

We see this quite a bit now, where various news outlets are saying the Cadillac ELR is not a success, but what’s overlooked is this previous statement from Cadillac senior vice president Bob Ferguson:

“The manufacturing for this vehicle will be limited. We’re saying, ‘Get in fast and buy it. We’re only going to make so many, and for so long.”

What Cadillac did with the ELR is to jam lots of production into a limited timeframe so that the production line could resume its normal activities as quickly as possible. Since the ELR is a limited production vehicle, it will only be on the normal production cycle perhaps once a year, and GM had allow for dealers to stock 1 or 2 units at the 530-odd participating Cadillac dealers in the United States

It can be custom ordered, but Cadillac’s intention was always to produce perhaps 1,000-2,000 or so ELRs all in one lump, then to rely on those units satisfying demand until the next limited production run was scheduled.

So, Cadillac may have some ELR oversupply, but basically that was always the intention.

Or, in other words, sure it is not selling all that well (as expected with that high starting MSRP), but there’s no failure story here. Let’s move along.

That’s one theory, but it belies the overall financial impact on the dealers and the market realities we’re seeing in the latest financial incentives.

First, dealers are buying these cars from GM and the cars are sitting on lots doing nothing but drag down the dealers’ financial results. The premise in this article is that dealers are fine to absorb the working capital required to facilitate GM’s production planning efficiencies.

Second, if this was always the plan to sell a low number of units each month then what’s up with the huge incentives we’re seeing right now? Those incentives are more likely the result of needing to move those units…because having those cars sit on dealer lots is a pretty significant drain on the dealers’ finances.

Don’t forget the service aspect as well. Could Cadillac-only dealers be expected to fork out for the specialized tools, equipment and skills needed to work on Voltec for such a meager number of vehicles? Or would ELR owners be expected to deal with Chevy service?

Good points. But there are a lot more Volts than Model s. and Volts required the least amount of maintenance in JD Power & Associates 3-year dependability study. So, it isn’t as meager as you indicate.

If not, then Cadillac service would only service ELRs, and their overall number was never intended to be any larger than ‘meager’.

So, presumably ELR owners needing maintenance (and while Voltec has been reliable, it is also complicated, things do go wrong, and it does need periodic maintenance including fairly precise flushing and filling of its complex coolant loops) would get it at Chevy service centers that can amortize the necessary tooling and skills across both Volts and ELRs.

If they had planned to sell 2,000 per year, then they would need to be selling around 150 per month to meet that. So while it may be true that the car was never meant to sell in high volumes, I think they were still expecting to sell 3x the volume they are selling now.

Cadillac just hired the guy at Nissan that don’t believe in electric cars and had canceled the Infinity electric saloon. Write this, in few years we will see people at GM knocking in the government’s door again ask for more money to save them. They were still trying to push big/fat/lazy SUV’s when the market was asking for compact saloons and crossovers – Hummer anyone? Now the marketing is moving to full electric vehicles (Tesla, Nissan, Renault, BMW and Volkswagen – to quot the most committed companies) and they are still trying to sell V8, SUV’s, Silverados… The same can apply to CHrysler…

If GM has to slash the price so much that they take a loss on every one they sell (or take a much steeper loss, if this is indeed a very limited production “California compliance” vehicle), then that’s what most people call a “failure”.

It just doesn’t present any real premium over the Volt, except a slicker (but not groundbreaking) body and the Caddy emblem. Had they included a big battery, then it would have justified the price, but I would expect at least 100-mile range for a $30-40k premium over the Volt, plus quick-charging.

The Volt will be my last gas-burning car, and my last GM unless they offer something extremely compelling, which I just don’t see coming.

Maybe they should go the obnoxious, in your face commercial route, describing how the ELR is the latest in American know hos and with engineering is that so exceptional. Oh wait, they already tried that.

This car already born dead. First who wants and electric car doesn’t want to spend money with fuel or continuous burning fuel and generating CO2 emissions. Second, the price would be OK if it was something completely new, but everyone knows that is just a fancy Volt. And then we have the basic amazing Tesla Model S for the similar price. Any doubt which one people would choose? Well, is enough to see the sales figure of the Model S and the ELR. When will the people at GM learn or at least follow trends? The Nissan Leaf isn’t an amazing car, but is selling in great number in the world because was the right car at the right moment – the one in the heart of the American crises that messed with the whole world and when people were more open and aware concern to spend money with fuel and preserve the environment….

The article concludes “…sure it is not selling all that well (as expected with that high starting MSRP), but there’s no failure story here.”

How is “not selling as well as expected” not equivalent with failure? The only way this can be considered “not a failure” is if GM deliberately overpriced the car initially, planning to reduce the cost after the very early adopters had bought theirs.

Well, that’s the way Apple prices their iPhones, but so far as I know, automobile manufacturers don’t use that business plan.

In some ways I think this is failure but then I keep remembering that they have sold nearly 400 volts for twice the price of a regular volt and I start to wonder if GM is really doing so badly with this.

I shouldn’t let the fact that I wouldn’t buy a Porsche or an ELR sway my belief that a car has succeeded or not. I think by basing the ELR on a much lower priced model I suspect that GM have saved a lot of money in development costs but (much like what ford did with Jag) not done a whole lot for the cars image.

However arbitrary it has always seemed to me, traditionally the level of success of a vehicle is determined by whether or not it can meet its sales target. Since by my knowledge no expected sales number for the ERL was ever publicly stated, technically you can’t really say it’s a failure. The Volt however, which sells just over a third of the 60.000 it was supposed to, is by that standard a giant failure.

I went to the dealer and test drove one. It is nicer than my Volt, but very impractical. The back seats have almost no leg room, so it is basically a 2-seater, and they replaced the hatch-back with a smallish trunk. I can load a 7 foot tall Christmas tree in my Volt, but you won’t get much more than a couple of golf bags in the ELR.

It looks cool, but I would still take a Volt over an ELR for the same price.

Had GM launched the initial Volt as a Caddy with some styling elements of the ELR they would have had a big hit. It’s a case of not doing your homework – early EV buyers are not all fuel misers looking for economy cars most of the EV buyers were trading in luxury cars – and many of those buyers would have had a smoother transition to Cadillac than to Chevy brand.

Anyway, I don’t understand why people are being a bit stubborn and still call the ELR a failure. The ELR isn’t supposed to be selling like hotcakes.
As the guy from TFL said, the Volt and the ELR are both like the Citroen DS and SM. One’s the sensible and well liked saloon, the other is an exclusive and stunning.

The ELR is suposed to be a stunning and exclusive car. I don’t see anyone calling the SM a failure (you can get death threats by saying that)!

For a more modern perspective, introducing the wildly odd-ball Renault AVANTIME. That too was exclusive, that too didn’t sell very much or lasted very long, that too looked different and that too was never seen as competitive. The only people who now call it a sales flop is TopGear, they don’t have any interest for it understanably. Those who do are owners and enthusiasts along with those who worked with the car from the beginning. They view it as a privelage to own an AVANTIME or to have worked with the AVANTIME.

It appears that Cadillac’s marketing strategy for the ELR is (1) Caricature your potential customers in the most demeaning way possible; (2) Ignore customers’ concerns about the ridiculously high price; (3) Insult your target customers by calling them derogatory names and inferring they’re cheap; and then (4) offer a 20-25% discount off the MSRP to attract those same customers who were originally turned off by steps 1-3.

Now I see that Cadillac has hired Johan de Nysschen, the decidedly anti-EV and backward-looking executive who was unable to salvage Infiniti’s domestic sales and who killed both of its promising luxury electric cars in development (the LE and Emerg-E). Cadillac hiring de Nysschen appears to be the death knell for the ELR, which reaffirms my belief that Cadillac has lost its way.

No wonder so many of those “miserly tree-huggers” Uwe Ellinghaus so publicly dismissed are buying $95k Teslas instead of the Cadillac ELR!